


Foresight

by lilyconrad



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Amputation, Dark Ending, For One Character Anyway, Gen, Padawan Obi-Wan, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-17
Updated: 2017-06-17
Packaged: 2018-11-15 07:48:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11226507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilyconrad/pseuds/lilyconrad
Summary: Armed with secret knowledge he cannot explain, Darth Maul awaits two Jedi in a hangar bay on Naboo.





	Foresight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Son_of_Dathomir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Son_of_Dathomir/gifts).



> A quick little gift for Bloodandselfies: I hope you like it!

Darth Maul waits in silence behind the heavy doors of the Naboo hangar, hearing and feeling in the duracrete the pounding of dozens of feet toward him from the other side.

He remembers the words of his new master, a shadow towering over him and impossible to look away from, impossible to believe in but there nonetheless.

 _When the doors open you will see the Jedi master you fought on Tatooine and his padawan. They will wave off the others and stay behind to fight you_.

There is no time to think about the strangeness of it all or the fact the shadow has already murdered Darth Sidious, the architect of Maul’s short, brutal life up to this point. The doors grind open and there the Jedi are, as his new master said they would be. Two humans: one older, one around Maul’s age.

_Listen carefully, “little brother”. Fight as you always have. Bring glory to the name of the Sith. But know this. There will come a time in the fight the padawan is separated from you and the master, and you will have a perfect opportunity to kill the master._

The fight whirls on deeper and deeper down the narrow catwalks that span the vast energy chambers and spirals down to a chokepoint of glowing red gates.

Maul ends up on the outside of the final gate, watching in silent awe as the prediction clicks into place: the padawan is trapped further back in the complex line of barriers, much too far to help the man who has sunk to his knees to meditate behind the last hissing wall of crimson separating him from Maul.

The air hums with the Force, violent waves of it rolling off of Maul and a loathsome, piercing brightness from the Jedi master in front of him. Maul wants to slay this arrogant fool who thinks he has time to meditate during a duel, and his new master’s words suggest that he will have the chance, but he has very specific orders.

_Do not kill him. If you kill the master, it will only enrage the padawan, and he will overpower you in the end. Wound the master badly enough he cannot fight, but his pain distracts his padawan._

The gates hiss open and the Jedi is on him, brutally powerful and strong in his attacks.

Maul rejoices in the terrifying beauty of the duel, every move a wild blur of instinct and one miss all it will take to end his life, to end the hard, awful slog out of Sidious’s grasp and into the glory his new master promises.

The foretold opening comes so quickly there is almost no time for thought: a spin and hard stab through the Jedi’s gut and he will die, that cursed glow of the Force around him extinguished like a candle flame in a gust of cold wind.

But Maul’s master has told him not to, and so he arcs the blade in a vicious slash upward instead.

The Jedi’s hand and saber go flying into the massive hole at the center of the chamber. He lets out a pained cry and falls to his knees, struggling to stay conscious through the sudden agony ripping across the shallow wound on his chest and the smoking ruin of his wrist.

The padawan lets out a cry of horror, his own Force signature trembling, and Maul grins at the harmony of psychic and physical pain from the two of them.

Oh, yes.

He understands now as he spins back to face the crackling red barrier and the snarling padawan on the other side of it. He sees his master’s wisdom. The younger human is strong in the Force, trained and filled with light but tainted with enough darkness the death of the Jedi would have made him fearsome for a time as rage fused the two halves of his spirit into one.

But now there is only the padawan’s fear for his master who lies writhing on the floor, and fear is the weakest of all the shadows that live in one’s heart.

Maul is not afraid. He is a predator and his blood sings with intoxicating pride and fury as it pounds through him. Now there is only the final part of his new master’s instructions left. The most important part.

_Capture the padawan. I want him alive and brought to me on Coruscant. Do this, my apprentice, and I will give you the galaxy._

The fight is longer than Maul expects but ends the way he is sure it will: the padawan knocked out with a deft blow to the head by the shaft of Maul’s saber and a quick escape through the secondary tunnels with his limp body thrown over Maul’s shoulder.

As he carries the unconscious and bound padawan up into his ship, he thinks about his new master’s words. _It is too late for me in my world, “little brother”, but it is not too late for you here. All I want is the padawan. He did this to me. To us._

When Maul lands in the nondescript hangar down in the seedy gloom of the midlevels, his master is already waiting. With a harsh clang of his robotic legs on the metal grating of the ship’s landing ramp, he stomps up to Maul and past him, an almost crazed look of anticipation in his unnervingly familiar yellow eyes. “Where is he?”

Maul stares openly up into his master’s face, in a way that he never dared with Sidious. “He’s up at the front, Master. I drugged him to keep him from making trouble.” It is still beyond strange, beyond description, to see his own face older and harsher and lit from within by the fire of mad obsession.

His master grins and stalks past him in a wave of silver and black to lean over the dazed, murmuring human tied to the copilot chair. He takes the padawan’s pale face in both hands.

“Kenobi,” he whispers with such a deep, horrible satisfaction Maul almost pities the Jedi.

Almost.


End file.
